Hooker, Ecumenism, and Authority

The Lambeth Quadrilateral has been called a mirror of a typical
Anglican ecclesiology, with interconnected liturgy, polity and
doctrine based on the ultimate test of scripture. This statement
itself may be a mirror of how Richard Hooker does his theology, a
theology which grew out of his conflict with Walter Travers when
they both served the Temple Church in London. There Hooker, the
Master, preached on a Sunday Morning, and the Assistant, Travers,
in the afternoon. Travers, who had been passed over as Master when
Hooker was appointed, took the opportunity to defend the Puritan
teaching that caused him to be passed over for Hooker. Hooker
himself then undertook to defend his own opinion which was more
catholic, in the sense of inclusive, and less fundamentally
scriptural.

Hooker took a position that was more inclusive, in the sense of
tolerating more variety of opinion and accepting of more variety of
practice in religious and state affairs. Travers was concerned to
exclude those things which were not strictly scriptural. Thus he,
rather than Hooker, took scripture "as the ultimate rule and test
of" liturgy, polity and doctrine. Hooker's attitude to scripture
was deeply nuanced by reason. He really made reason, in the sense
of thought and acceptation, the criterion of reading scripture. I
do not say the criterion of scripture. Hooker really did hold
scripture in first place. He held the application of reason
necessary for the understanding and application of scripture. This
applied to all areas in which scripture might be applied, doctrine,
polity, and worship, and to devotion and ethics as well.

What were the points of this controversy? The first main
difference arose over the question of predestination. Some years
previous to this controversy, Hooker, preaching before major
figures of court and Church, had maintained in God two wills, the
one antecedent, the other consequent, so the first will of God is
that all should be saved, the second that "only those who did live
answerable to that degree of grace which he had offered, or
afforded him."(cited from Walton's Life of Hooker in Wolf, p 4.)
This contradicted the Calvinist view held by Travers, that the will
of God is single and unitary, and thus that God directly damns some
prior to any behavior of their own. Thus Hooker asserts the
possibility, if not the fact, of the inclusion of all.

Hooker further compromised himself in Travers' Calvinist eyes by
asserting that Romans Catholics could be saved as Roman Catholics,
because that Church, though not perfect and erring in various ways,
still held to Christ and the greater part of the foundations of
Christianity, and so its faithful were excused by honest ignorance
of the truth. (Traver's Supplication, in Keble, vol iii, p
560) Travers replies that none who believe in justification, in
part, by works can be saved because they are in ignorance of the
truth of scriptural teaching, namely that all are saved by faith
alone.(ibid.) Thus for Travers any drop of falsity tends to
exclude, while for Hooker truth, even partial and mistaken but
well-meant, tends to include. Knox says, "Hooker's aim was to
emphasize the unity of Christendom before its divisions by pointing
out first the things in which all Christians agreed: "I took it for
the best and most perspicuous way of teaching, to declare first,
how far we do agree, and then to show our disagreements.'"(Knox,
page 76.) This inclusive approach Hooker was to follow in his
greater work and final defense, The Lawes of Ecclesiastical
Polity.

Finally Travers attacked Hooker on his manner of accepting
Scripture. Here the crux of the matter lies. Here is where Hooker
might wish to ask what is meant by scripture as the "ultimate rule
and test." Travers took exception to Hooker's saying that the
assurance of what we believe by word is not so great as that we
believe by sense. Hooker replies by asking why it is then, that if
assurance by word is greater, God so frequently shows God's
promises to us in our sensible experience.(Knox, p 75.) Here is a
foreshadowing of the lovely Hooker we find in the Lawes.
Hooker's ultimate principle he calls reason, but he does not mean
by it dry and academic logic, but thought. And by thought he does
not mean propositional thinking, though it includes that. He means
the process of experience, and reflection on experience, that
issues in knowledge and wisdom, and supremely, the knowledge of
God. Further, for Hooker, the realm of experience is ordinary life,
all of it. Of this ordinary experience, scripture is a part. As all
comes from God, so scripture does. As we learn from all our
experience, and learn that the world is so ordered that it works in
this way and not that in its phenomena, an ordering which Hooker
calls "law," and states that it comes from the Creator and reveals
its Creator in it, so we learn of God from Scripture, and scripture
is a form of law, supernatural law. This supernatural law supplies
the knowledge of God which we cannot gain from the natural law we
discern in the world around us. But for Hooker the process of
understanding is not different whatever the form of law it is that
is being discerned. "So our own words also when wee extoll the
complete sufficiencie of the whole entire bodie of the scripture,
must in like sorte be understoode with this caution, that the
benefite of natures light be not thought excluded as unnecessarie,
because the necessitie of a diviner light is
magnifyed.(Lawes I.14.4)"

This is an implicit critique of Travers' and the Puritans use of
scripture as the ultimate rule and guide. They used scripture as a
set of propositional laws, unrelated to the ordinary life of humans
of their time, as eternal laws. They were absolute, in the sense
that they were unconnected to person and circumstance, and were
used to form person and circumstance to their mold rather than both
conforming to and at the same time transforming person and
circumstance. Hooker's complaint, though the words would be
profoundly anachronistic, is that the Puritan's construction of
scripture is unhistorical. So in discussing the Puritan's
construction of ecclesial institutions on scriptural models, Hooker
points out that the words of scripture were written to address
certain occasions and situations in the life of the church, and not
as absolute rules. "The severall bookes of scripture having had
each some severall occasion and particular purpose which caused
them to be written, the contents thereof are according to the
exigence of that speciall ende whereunto they are
intended.(Lawes I.14.3)" His whole critique of the Puritan
use of scripture is summed up in Lawes IV.11.7: "Words must
be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered."

Finally, in the Travers-Hooker controversy, one must take notice
of the irenic tone that underlies the polemic. The two men remained
on good terms personally, and both made it clear that there was no
personal animosity. Among other things, Travers' brother
John was married to Hooker's sister. Hooker in fact seems to have
found all controversy hateful; this may have made him so kind a
pleader as he was. This fundamental personal amity may be as great
a contribution to ecumenism as any theological contribution.

So Hooker challenges the word of the bishop on scripture. But
his basic mode of all inclusive reason fulfills the bishop's basic
image of an inclusive field of doctrine, polity and liturgy; Hooker
would simply add scripture as a fourth element at play. And his
inclusivity lies at the heart of the ecumenical intention of the
Quadrilateral. The Quadrilateral is fundamentally Anglican.

The quarrel between Hooker and Travers, between the Anglican and
Puritan positions, was fundamentally about authority in the human
and political sense. Travers was eventually deprived of his
position at the Temple, and other Puritans removed from their
positions because they were perceived as disloyal and as subverting
the order established by law. They were, for instance, converting
the Church into a Calvinist institution inside a shell of
Episcopacy and this was seen as political subversion and dangerous
to public order.

The issues under consideration by the Anglican-Roman Catholic
International Consultation likewise seem to have come down to
issues of authority. In most of the dialogue, a Hookerlike
irenicism of balanced inclusion has prevailed. On scripture, the
report says that the Church's expression of God's revelation must
be tested by "its consonance with scripture." The report adds,
however, "This does not mean simply repeating the words of
Scripture, but also both delving into their deeper significance and
unraveling their implications for Christian belief and practice. It
is impossible to do this without resorting to current language and
thought."(Final Report p 70. Likewise, in the discussion of
the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Consultation moves
toward inclusion. The report states that some emphasize the
presence of Christ in the food eaten, other in the presence of
Christ in the eater. "In the opinion of the Commission neither
emphasis is incompatible with the eucharistic faith, provided that
the complementary movement emphasized by the other position is not
denied."(Final Report, p 22.)

This amity has not succeeded when it comes to a common sense of
ecclesial authority. Here the statement of the Quadrilateral is
really irrelevant to the situation. What it calls for as a common
principle, the historical episcopate, is agreed on by both Roman
Catholics and Anglicans. Unfortunately the historic episcopate in
Roman Catholicism has come to include a great deal that Anglicans
cannot accept. The ground of nonacceptance is exclusivity in the
Roman Catholic institution of authority. The problem is the
authority of the Bishop or Rome to teach and rule in absolute ways.
The position of the Roman Catholic Church has been that those not
in communion with Rome are a defective church, separate from God
and salvation. They are not in the Church, properly defined, and
outside that Church there is no salvation. And the Roman communion
has unfortunately locked itself into this position by defining the
infallible teaching authority of the Papacy, and further using that
infallible authority to define doctrine as binding.

I think it is fair to say that the Quadrilateral presents
neither opportunity nor obstacle here to the furthering of
Christian unity. I think it is also fair to say that Anglicans have
done a great deal to further unity in their ecumenical agreements
with the Roman communion. We have agreed to a sort of primacy of
the Pope on historical grounds, to seeing the function of the Pope
as the sign of unity for all Christians. This has been the function
of that office through history. But this function has been in the
context of councils and synods, and Anglicans, in their usual
balancing act wish to hold together conciliarity and papacy. What
is now required is for the Papacy to declare itself conciliar.

This is a problem of history expressed in theological terms.
This doesn't vitiate the theology, but it does relativize it. It is
well for all of us to be honest about our histories. Anglicanism is
rooted in an historical situation of constitutional monarchy. Well
before the Reformation, kings in England were set partially subject
to the will of the people, or at least some of them. The absolute
right of kings was abolished in England in intimate relationship to
a state Church. Democracy and universal suffrage came early, though
in stages, in England, and as the Church was established. it was a
participant in the process. Religious democracy in Anglicanism went
farthest in the United States. Here we elect bishops. This is in
starkest contrast to Roman Catholicism. I doubt we would yield up
electing our bishops. But Rome would have to come a long way indeed
to allow such election. As an option for part of a reunited church,
it would quickly spread to all of it. This would be an all or
nothing decision.

The Roman communion, unlike its Anglican and Protestant brothers
and sisters, has been the victim, not the beneficiary of democratic
rule. Rome, seeing and proclaiming itself so absolute as it did in
the face of the reformations of the sixteenth century, was seen and
experienced by the forces of embryonic democracy as the ally of
absolute monarchy and the foe of democracy, both of which it truly
was. It is not for naught that after the coming of Italian unity
and democracy the Pope became the "prisoner of the Vatican."
Throughout the democratic and liberal revolutions, the papacy
became more and more isolated. The louder the liberal voice, the
louder Rome denounced them in reaction, and the stronger the
exclusivity became. Rome saw the new movements as subversive much
in the same way that the court of Eliazbeth and the Church saw the
Puritans as subversive.

Ironically, it was this same history that produced ecumenism.
The democratic and liberal revolutions were organically linked to
the final end of the feudal organization of society and the growth
of urban factory economy. Traditional human community was destroyed
by this change, and the community of workers as "hands" rather than
as persons formed. The village with its web of relations that
supported and maintained human community ceased to be for modern
workers.

At the same time, the Church ceased to be linked to and
supported by modern states. The democrats and liberals saw the
Churches as forces that hindered rather than held human progress.
In the midst of this situation, movements toward community
developed in the Churches. The sense of Church was rediscovered, in
England in the Oxford movement, in Germany by J A Mohler, in Sweden
by Grundtvig, in German Reformed America in the Mercersburg
theology, and in Roman Catholicism in the revival of Benedictine
monasticism. All of this happened in the same few years toward the
end of the first half of the nineteenth century. This is probably
not coincidence. Another consequence of these movements was a new
sense of the importance and dignity of common worship. This
encouraged theologians to study the history and meaning of worship.
In this study, much of what we have found that we have in common
was rediscovered. Furthermore, this study took place in the culture
of scholars, which was universal, which is to say, ecumenical,
rather than parochial as the Churches were. The community of
scholars ministered community to the Churches, who then discovered
ecumenism. Thus we have this Quadrilateral.

Hookerlike, we may see in this history of our common life, God
teaching us the way intended at creation, the way of unity intended
in the Cross and Resurrection. The call of the Quadrilateral seems
to be God's will for us. But in terms of our relationship with
Roman Catholicism, we may have to await further historical
development. We wait in faith, seeing that God's will for us is
being fulfilled and trusting in fulfillment yet to come. We wait
knowing that we have done our part, more or less, and as best we
could. We have agreed to a primacy of the Pope. We await his taking
it up. In the meantime we continue to enjoy the Christian company
and cooperation of our Roman Catholic brother and sisters which is
so newfound and so unexpected a surprise, such a gift of grace,
such a miracle, such a joy. And we pray.

SOURCES

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.

ARCIC, The Final Report

Booty, John E, The Church in History.

Booty, John E, Five Anglican Divines on the Sacraments,
Un published Manuscript, January 1981.